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There's more to dislike of Hilary Clinton than national allegiances. (c) Andrew Harnik AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.A few weeks
ago, I made a startling discovery while at my parents’ house in
Brooklyn. Having decided to make tea, I picked up a white mug I had
never seen before. When I poured in the hot water, colors began to appear, and
then, as if in some Harry Potter-like
horror sequence, the word “Trump”, followed by the American flag, followed by
the phrase “Make America Great Again” in red, white, and blue. I immediately
confronted my father.

“Dad,” I said,
holding the mug up as forensic evidence, “did you seriously buy a Disappearing
Magic Color-Changing Trump Mug? Like, are you seriously voting for him or is
this a novelty item, like your Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal collection?”

My father
responded in Russian, saying yes he was voting for Trump. As a proud
Russian-Jewish immigrant who had “made it” in America, he cherished his civic duty
to vote. When I asked him to elaborate on why, he responded in his typical
gruff-but-succinct way: “I hate
Hillary. I HATE her,” he growled. “But… Trump’s an IDIOT.”

My experience tells me that most Russian-Americans do not actually love Trump — they generally regard him as an orange-coloured buffoon

It’s a
prevailing opinion in New York’s Russian-American community, in which I was
raised from the age of five, having been born in St Petersburg, Russia. The
Russian-American population in the United States is estimated at 2.9m, making it the second-largest
foreign-born ethnic demographic in the country (the first is Mexican). About a
quarter of Russian-Americans reside in the state of New York, making their
political beliefs not insignificant for the outcome of the election.

My experience tells me that most Russian-Americans do not actually love Trump — they generally regard him as an orange-coloured buffoon who can't control his temper. But their dislike of him is, in the end, trumped (no pun intended) by an intense hatred for Hillary Clinton.

Of course, this
does not go for the entire demographic. By and large, Russian-American
millennials support Hillary, for the same reason as American millennials.
Well-educated, liberal, eurocentric Russian-Americans, the kind that live on
the Upper West Side and throw literary salons and hobnob with Masha Gessen, are
also staunchly #Imwithher.

“I think I won't dare to show my face
to my friends in any country in Europe if Trump wins and I didn't go to vote to
support Clinton,” Natalia Newman, an erudite Upper West Sider, said when I
asked why she was voting.

But the vast majority of Russian-Americans, the ones living
in the outer boroughs of Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens, they’re a different
story.

The reasons that they would begrudgingly respect Trump are
sort of obvious. First of all, as
Olga Kazan pointed out in her article for The Atlantic, there’s a myriad of refugees that escaped the bleak
reality of Soviet life and associate anything left-wing with the socialist
tyranny that deprived them of food, freedom and family. These people would vote
Republican regardless of the candidate because they view it as the party that
embraces hard work, overcoming adversity, the treasures of capitalism and the
potential to succeed no matter where you came from–all of the things that lured
them to America and make them love it so much.

There’s
a certain satisfaction in being able to turn around to Americans and say: “Ha!
See? You’re not immune. It can happen to you too.”

Then there’s Trump’s rhetoric, which while undoubtedly
boorish, can also be perceived as refreshingly brash. Russians are a blunt
crowd, and they hate what my mother disdainfully refers to as “the fake
American smile”. Russian-Americans often say that Hillary is “too much of
politician”, meaning she looks like everything she says and does was crafted by
campaign managers, like the presidential version of a Stepford Wife. In
comparison, Trump appears to be a “real person”, someone who doesn’t have
enough of a filter to hide what he truly thinks and feels and who’s too stupid
to be cunning and manipulative. Russians always prefer the devil that you know
to the one you don’t.

In regard to the homophobic, racist, and sexist comments
that tumble out of him, I personally believe it’s not so much that
Russian-Americans agree with his statements as it is that they take a perverse
satisfaction in how horrible they are. For so long, Russians got so much shit
for having a megalomaniac as a leader, as if it were a failure on the part of
the country and its citizens. There’s a certain satisfaction in being able
to turn around to Americans and say: “Ha! See? You’re not immune. It can happen
to you too.”

The unmitigated, almost primal hatred for Hillary is harder
to understand. It would be easy to blame it all on garden variety misogyny, and
certainly that’s part of it, but the truth goes deeper than that. After all,
the same Russian-Americans who despise Hillary Clinton absolutely adore
Margaret Thatcher. They respect her for the same reasons that they respect
Trump, because they perceive her as tough and bullshit-proof, and therefore
trustworthy.

What gives? I asked my father once how he could respect Margaret
Thatcher so much but hate Hillary Clinton, and his response said it all: “Well…
Margaret Thatcher wasn’t really a woman.”

And there it is. Margaret Thatcher doesn’t count, because
the way she spoke and talked and looked and walked was very “masculine.”
Hillary, on the other hand, celebrates her womanhood in a way that appeals to
the multifaceted nature of female identity. She’s tough and opinionated and
wears pantsuits, but she’s also got a stylish blowout and waxes on endlessly
about the joys of motherhood and grandmotherhood.

The Russian attitude to female strength is very complex,
because Russian women are known for being strong, but in a very particular way.
In Russia, men often joke that they have to do something because they are
“afraid of their wives.” And with good reason, because I’ve seen some flying
spatulas in my day.

Clinton’s outright abhorrence of all things Russian is a legitimate concern for many Russian-Americans, who more than anyone want mommy and daddy to please stop fighting

When I think of a Russian housewife, the image that
immediately gets conjured is a woman standing in the doorway to her apartment,
arms crossed in a look of silent rage, icily glaring at her husband as he
drunkenly slumps up the steps, his head hanging in shame as he walks past her.

It is acceptable within Russian culture for a woman to be
strong for her family, because without her the household would fall apart — the
husband is not expected to hold it together. But it’s a very different story when a woman
asserts herself as an individual.

During a recent press conference
at a BRICS summit in Goa, Putin was asked once again whom he
supports in the US election. He responded very diplomatically (communicating
largely in smirks as per usual), saying that the US election wasn’t really
Russia’s business, and in any case whatever the outcome it’s not clear if Trump
will make good on his promise to cooperate with Russia or that Clinton will go
through with her hardball approach. But, I guess if you put a gun to his head:

“Mrs Clinton has chosen to
take up a very aggressive stance against our country, against Russia,” Putin
said. “Mr Trump, on the other hand, calls for cooperation – at least when it
comes to the international fight against terrorism.”

To give credit where credit is due, he’s not completely
wrong here. Clinton’s
outright abhorrence of all things Russian is a legitimate concern for many
Russian-Americans, who more than anyone want mommy and daddy to please stop
fighting. Trump may say he’s not best friends with Putin, but he certainly seems to play
Gretchen Weiners to Putin’s Regina George, which at least paves the way for
some international diplomacy.

“Russian-Americans (those who still have
a soft spot for Russia even if they despise Putin) are not happy with her
Russia stance, because that stinks of the Cold War all over again,” Vica Miller,
a writer and communications executive who lives in Manhattan and is voting for
Clinton, said. “In that regard, I myself wish she'd get off her high horse and
try diplomacy before threats. She's alienating an entire country, which is not
a wise step in the current global situation.”

As
I watch my father yell at the television screen, alternating between Putin and
Hillary, I still can’t help but wonder: “What would happen if she were a man?”

But what caught my attention is the
specific word that Putin used to describe her — “aggressive”. That word really
sets me off in Russian, because I’ve only heard it applied to women, and I get
it all the time.

I hear it from my mother when I casually
mention at a dinner party that I’m not sure I want to have kids. I hear it from
my Russian boyfriends when I tell them that, actually, no, it’s not cool to
leave me waiting for three hours because my time is valuable too. I hear it
every time I stand up and fight for something that’s important to me. Aggresivnaya is basically Russian for
“shrill harpy/bitch.”

So, as a woman vying for a position of
leadership, you basically have two options. You can either submit yourself to a
traditional female gender role, and therefore never really be taken seriously,
or you can be tough and assertive, but in doing so relinquish your public
identity as a woman. It’s a Catch-22, and Hillary falls right into it.

To be fair, there are legitimate reasons
why many Russian-Americans won’t vote for Hillary. Jewish Russian-Americans who
identify closely with Israel hate her because of her support of the Iran deal.
Decades of government harassment has also given Russians an ingrained distrust
of politicians and a persecution complex, which doesn’t jibe well with the fact
that Hillary is a hotbed of conspiracy theories. Then, of course, there’s the
whole email debacle, which stinks of the Soviet era and further categorizes her
as a typical politician with something to hide.

But as I watch my father yell at the
television screen, alternating between Putin and Hillary, I still can’t help
but wonder: “What would happen if she were a man?”

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